The Angry Exile: More financial fuckwittery.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Monday 19 October 2009

More financial fuckwittery.

From Dick Puddlecote's comment on this blog about the government's proposed tax raid on banks I see that self certified mortgages may go the way of the elephant, royally fucking things up for the self employed. I'd mustered a few thoughts but Dick Puddlecote has already shredded the idea.

Sunday.

It's a day of rest for fuck's sake, can't proscriptive cockwafflers cease hostilities for just 24 blissful hours in a week?
The Financial Services Authority will make banks liable for loans if they do not check customers can afford them.

It is expected to ban self-certified mortgages, in which customers do not have to prove their income.
Because bans are the knee-jerk response in these modern, enlightened times. Fucking beam me up, Scotty, I'm ready for life on another pigging world.

Yep. As I've found myself simply changing countries isn't likely to be enough, though I doubt ASIC would do the same thing here with small businesses being so popular here in Oz.

Self-certified mortgages have a very real purpose. For those whose income is hard to prove by conventional means, or the self-employed for whom the general 'three years' accounts' rule is not possible, a self-cert is the only way into home-buying.

They are also (or were when I was in the difficult position of not having traded for three years), a very safe lending opportunity, it always seemed to me.

An average purchase price in my area is around £200,000 I reckon. The self-certs I have seen offered ask for a 20% minimum deposit. So, the lender instantly has a £40,000 head start on the deal. If you failed to make a single payment, the reposession costs and loss of value from a recuperative firesale auction are fairly well covered. There would be a short-term loss of liquidity for the bank but that is about it.

On top of that, the credit risk score required is higher, and the interest rate offered for such deals is normally at a premium which offers attractive profits for the lender - just what they would be looking for in these straitened times, one would assume.

As usual, though, regulators have balanced the evidence, weighed up all the pros and cons, and come to the conclusion that none of us are to be trusted to buy so much as a shoe box on the basis of our own cognisance.

It's the risk-averse culture transposed into the banking sector. Personal responsibility of both the borrower and lender is being eradicated in favour of heavy-handed state intervention. Willing to lend at little or no risk? No chance, the choice is no longer yours.

Couldn't put it better. As for the idiot idea of making banks liable for loans, seriously, what the fuck? In a sense they always were liable in the same way that if you lend a mate money and he does a moonlight flit you've lost out, and so there's always a responsibility to be prudent about the loan of money whether you're an individual or a bank. The big problem, as so many said before, is there's no incentive to be prudent when there's an expectation that someone will step in and bail you out if you fuck things up and lend money to bad risks. And there needs to be one because, as we've seen, there are big incentives to hose money at people who can only repay the debt in boom conditions, and far from being an opposing incentive balancing the reckless lending impulse implied government safety nets are precisely the opposite.

As DP says, personal responsibility is being made a thing of the past and regulation, regulation and yet more regulation is taking over. That'll work fine until the next fuck up when we'll be told the same old shit - regulations didn't anticipate, the lending rules permitted, blahdefuckingblah. Past regulation and government interference has created the unforeseen consequence of unnatural incentives to loan unwisely, and I don't have much faith that things will be any better if the government's regulator starts meddling in mortgages. Aside from anything else the business of a loan between a bank and a borrower should be largely between them and them alone unless actual fraud is involved, though of course thats one area of financial dealings that the government might not want too much light shone on.